Straw Economy

Straw Economy

JOSHUA STERN

September 11- October 25, 2009

Referring to an exhibition of Joshua Stern paintings in the late eighties, the critic, John Sturman, writing in the now defunct Arts Magazine, called the work "timely", but stated that the artist hadn't yet "thought of a great deal to say". Although other reviewers of the same exhibition (Kate Linker in Artforum) thought otherwise, Sturman's statement is perhaps indicative of misinterpretations of the complexities of Stern's work over the last twenty years that may have robbed him of certain types of mainstream recognition.

Indeed, Stern's tireless curiosity about the very nature of contemporary art and the complexity of its possible multiple relations to History, Art History, Politics, the Market and the Economy, for example, means that his work always has a huge amount to say, (as does the artist), and whether or not this makes it "timely", his practice has always eschewed any concerns with fashion, making him generally both atypical and impossible to categorize at the best of times. This has been his strength and his handicap.

Joshua Stern's solo exhibition: Straw Economy, his third at Parker's Box, brings together selected examples from different bodies of work made over the last two decades or so. Not wishing to take on a retrospective stance as such, the choice of works sets out instead to explore the artist'ss common concerns, charting a thread of reflection through a range of contrasting works.

As an artist who obsesses over each detail of the manual fabrication of his works, Stern might indeed be seen as somewhat old school, but this would be a misconception as his attitude corresponds perfectly to his equally obsessive concern with the "unreal" economy of the art market, and the essential role of the artist's hand in creating value. Of course for many artists this has been reduced to being a signatory, but Stern is an ironic purist here, wryly observing the dynamic that allows some collectors, dealers and artists to conspire together to achieve Solomon's ability to turn everything to gold. While the economic crisis has largely broken the spell that allowed too many such Solomons to operate, the pertinence of Stern's works dealing specifically with this theme can only be accentuated in the current climate. The most obvious examples include his text paintings (from 2005-6) that bear the words: "One of the other paintings in this series is owned by" to be completed with options noting the first names of various heavy-hitting collectors: (Michael and Susan; Don and Mera... etc). Stern satirizes the herd instincts of many collectors, while also offering grains of provocation.

Stern's text works all offer keys to identifying certain impulses behind much of his output. The paintings from the late eighties bear relatively obscure corporate logos, beautified by the use of encaustic, glazing, and various aging techniques. Here, "DoAll" and "Thoro", seem to be ancient vestiges of forgotten commodities (or broken economies). Writings about these works at the time might even make them seem somewhat premonitory when read today, since they were seen to evoke "industry trying to adapt to a world gone horribly wrong" (Arts Magazine).

In one series of photographic works, Stern has taken images of single words, (answer; hate; joy...), or figures from classical paintings- each reflected in the head of a pin. These color photographs are beautifully executed- the pin appearing huge, shiny and as precious as the reflected image. The artist has spoken of magnifying the grandness of the insignificant, and this is certainly what much of Stern's work seeks to do, whether in his photographs of extraordinarily expressive, tiny stick figures, his highly magnified photographs of miniature spitball sculptures, or indeed when text is elevated to become the "language" of painting itself. The notion of course has its parallel once again in relation to art market values.

In one of his most surprising, recent (and ongoing) returns to painting, Joshua Stern tackles the theme of The Beaver. On first thoughts, it would be easy to imagine that Stern has finally cracked, in favor of cute animal paintings of the crassest kind, and he has indeed applied himself to furnishing a few of those to the series of over eighty works. But Stern's paintings actually deal with the fact that the US economy was founded on trading in beaver skins, a commodity far more important at the time than oil has been in more recent history. It is because of the huge importance of beavers to the development of the USA that the little animal is associated with so many brand names, corporations, schools, place names, logos etc. The often overlooked economic (and socio-cultural) importance of the beaver, so often reduced to the level of a historical anecdote, or a piece of sexual slang, has been the inspiration for this impressive collection of paintings.

The most significant key to exploring Joshua Stern's oeuvre, is probably the awareness that each of his realizations is a piece of research closely related to the previous one, regardless of appearances. In true scientific fashion, decisions are made to verify the relevance of radically different avenues. Suggestions of a lack of "stylistic coherence" are therefore redundant, since like all good scientists, Stern is open to any kind of lateral thinking that might take him closer to his artistic goal, since he knows that in contemporary art even a control experiment or placebo might impose itself as being both the most seductive and ultimately the most relevant and valuable solution.

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